It is a trend we have begun to see here in Europe. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland—to cite a few places with mild to worse experiences (in that order). Indian restaurants are notorious for being expensive to very expensive. Bombay Palace near Scheveningen takes the cake when it comes to servings. We were horrified when our order¹ worth €70.- was barely sufficient for one adult!

It might be okay if you don’t know the difference between finger-food and lunch. But if I were you, then I’d never go to those smooth-talking scoundrels again.

1. This was our first, and you bet, would be our last visit there.

• Rude shock one: Asked to take my Clarks off and place on the hand luggage scanner conveyor. Schiphol, Amsterdam.
• Rude shock two: The entire hotel arranged private transport scanned at the gates—like it was some live bomb; and then body scanners at the entrance. Hyatt Regency, Mumbai.
• Rude shock three: Body frisking, backpack and purse scanning. Kids included. Atria Mall, Worli.
• Rude shock four: Frisked 6-8 times (I stopped counting); again, kids included. Sahar, Mumbai.

Wonder what this world is coming to. Goodbye dignity, hello intrusion.

Update: And oh, I completely missed mentioning about those grilling questions in the name of psycho-profiling at departure gates.

Update 2: For the record, I have no problems with being scanned. Just hoping it’s done in a little dignified and non-intrusive way. Asking me to take my shoes off and place on the conveyor is not one of those. I consider frisking intrusive. I’d much prefer if the body scanner also scanned my shoes without me taking them off. Ditto for everything I am wearing.

Given a choice, I’d take Pizzahut’s pan pizza any time they’re placed alongside Dominos, but because Dominos delivers home, we will run with them. Curry and Shoarma flavors are really nice.

1. Pizzahut appears to be selective in where they can deliver.

Apple thinks 1 Euro is same as 1 USD. A Mac mini costs US$599 in the US. The same in Europe costs Euro 619!

Microsoft and Google have gone a step further. They think 1 British Pound is same as 1 US dollar! Wtf?! Unbelievable? Look at the prices of Vista licenses in the UK. Compare the Google Mini appliance price in the UK with that sold in the US, for a few examples.

I can’t believe it, but there is perhaps no explanation but this: they are systematically robbing the Europeans. Does anyone care?

If you have ever taken such a test, then you will know that it is an X-ray examination. If you have completed your secondary school, then you would further know that X-ray is generally considered harmful. Taking X-rays of growing children and pregnant women is to be strictly avoided, unless it is a life threatening situation.

Here’s a cold hard fact: Holland, one of the world’s most advanced and highly developed country, with excellent healthcare and benefits, insists on X-raying growing children so that they can be eligible to have resident permits, even if their parents satisfy all the criteria.

Go to any clinic in Malaysia, Singapore or India and doctors there refuse to X-ray children, unless there is no alternative for diagnosing illness, and to plan further treatment. When we had our comprehensive health check-up last in Malaysia, the doctors specifically said this: We don’t X-ray children, unless they are sick and need diagnosis.

This afternoon, we went to the GGD on Thorbecklaan for the compulsory test, as required by the IND, and allowed the Dutch health officials to expose our kids — 6 and 2 years old — to ionizing radiation.

If you use the <!–more–> feature, it will cut off posts in RSS feeds.

Yes, but without notice to the reader that perhaps there is more content. WTF? The same ‘more’ tag adds a custom visual indication, that there’s more content, when viewed on the web page. Then why this bias for feeds?

A bug?

Update: A solution by way of a plugin. I avoid using plugins for very basic functionality offerings, but this directly affects whoever reads my feeds. If this helps me serve full feeds, then so be it.

I have always dreamt of having an IKEA store in my hometown (there isn’t one, by the way). I have often picked-up used and dated Ikea magazines from bookstores (yes, they sell, for inspiration, I suppose). My first time shopping in an Ikea store (in Malaysia) was a dream come true.

This is for everyone, who think DIY¹ is cool. When you put a couple of screws in a wooden board, make your chair roll over the floor, it’s cool. It’s one thing to build a couple of things yourself, but entirely another when it comes to setting the furniture for an entire house.

It came as a rude shock when we actually received our first shopping consignment. Because, it was then that we realized the amount of stuff, we had to put together, to make a livable home. And this was just half the stuff. There were many items unavailable—some of them still are—with the most notable being the sofa; my daughter’s desk; and a couple of matching dining chairs.

Ikea’s (transport/delivery) service makes me go hmm. We blew €95 for the first shipment, which weighed about a ton. This price is applicable only if it is a ground-floor delivery. (I really like this one.) Add 30% of that cost to every higher floor you want the delivery at. Anyone familiar with Dutch homes will know that this bit of news comes like a well-seasoned hard dried brick aimed right at your skull.

We took our delivery at ground-floor, obviously. We then, dismantled large components into manageable ones before we could haul them up our narrow spiral wooden staircase. Imagine ants at work—carrying one piece at a time.

That day, Sneha and I spent an entire back-breaking evening setting-up our kids’ bunker bed, in a cycle of couple of do-loops and a couple of if-else, break routines.

I quickly realized that this activity was not worth enjoying, and decided to get help. A senior colleague of mine recommended a local help and offered his contacts. At €14 euros an hour, the man went on to fix most of our stuff in about a week’s time, 3 hours a day on an average. You can add up the economics, if you like. And believe me, this is a steal-deal, locals would say.

Today, we ordered our consignment number two². It would be delivered sometime in the middle of next week. That’s when we will start shedding either fresh drops of sweat or those green bills. Tough choice.

I am happy that there is no IKEA store in my home country. Our local ‘Ramlal’ would happily build anything, that we come up with, as a design.

1. We were forced to go this road simply because Ikea is the place where you get the stuff you want quickest. If you have lived long enough in Holland, you’ll know that a typical furniture order takes at least 3-months for delivery. We didn’t want to sit / sleep on a cheap rug until that happened. The downside, however, was the DIY that came with it.
2. After another round of 7-hours shopping, my daughter is sick of it.

Well, here’s the low down. In a hurry to get every important thing we had, before leaving India, we mixed up stuff. Some things went in the air cargo shipment, some in the sea-freight. The most important ones, we carried them with us.

While we did that, we forgot some important items: The chargers, the proprietary USB cables, the drivers, the works. They are sitting in the cargo and I can’t get to them. Sort of a catch-22.

We carried our phone chargers, thank god, but put our camera chargers in the shipment. What a huge forehead slap, that one feels like now!

The Olympus we have has just run out of battery, and we have the charger, but no cable! Canon A80 would have been good, because it uses AA size dry ones or rechargeable ones, but, it has developed a CCD problem. And it’s making every picture I take look abstract. So, without a doubt, this one needs to go to service pits and then, either get the hardware and firmware upgraded or down the recycle bin.

The only working camera is the phone camera. 2.0 Megapixel built-into this one, which can’t really take nice ones in bad light. Plus, no flash. Well, there is one actually, but it doesn’t work, thanks to a nice episode we had a while ago.

So there you are. That’s a good reminder for me to kick myself to get everything associated with a camera, and not just it alone.

The government and the people², in favor of this, are justifying this by saying that this is how it has always been known in the local language, this is how it is written in our local language, so this is how it should be known as. And that it is being rightfully reversed to its pre-colonial Kannada name.

Whatever happened to our history? Should we now be denying that we ever had a colonial history? In fact, if it weren’t for the British, these places could have easily withered out of existence. It could easily have been Surat³ instead of Mumbai as today’s business capital, Pondicherry⁴ instead of Chennai, and perhaps, Vishakhapatnam instead of Calcutta.

The British gave these places importance. They acquired metropolitan status because they raised them to that stature, by making it their own strategic key locations in business, trade and in defense.

Digression: I had such a problem remembering Constantinople’s other name Istanbul renamed by Turks, in my history books, while reading about the European trade routes to the ancient India. I continue to have trouble remembering new street names, for example, even if they have been recently changed within the last 20 years or so.

Reversing to pre-colonial names is stripping history, denying that it happened. If they were really interested in restoring historic names, they should have restored it all the way back to one name: Venugram, the bamboo village, as it was originally known as.

This half-cooked attempt in making it sound more local interprets idiocy. People and the government fail to realize the gash they’re leaving in the timeline of a place’s history. This will only lead to confusion and an eventual loss of its rich heritage through the sands of time.

Anyone can misuse power when given, as the government of Karnataka is doing⁵, for the sake of vote banks, trying to make us believe that the government is really doing something that we will be proud of. On the contrary, they are, in fact, doing it with such a force that it will render pagerank⁶ of this place to null.

As everyone else has been saying, we could do well with better infrastructure, better and decent livelihood for its people, instead of wrecking a mindless havoc such as this, and losing its very identity in the process.

History is not erased, but the route back is made a little harder to read, learn, appreciate and go forward, with these unnecessary twists and turns.

1. There is just one problem though. The name Belagaavi has never been used except in Kannada script. At worst, it has been called Belgaon or Belagaon, in spoken language. No local Kannadiga calls it Belagaavi.
2. It is as much sad and surprising to note that people favoring this can be so indifferent, or worse, in favor of this change. The only conclusion is that they don’t realize the repercussions they’re giving in to.
3. Surat was the most favored and flourishing trade port at the time. The very fact that it was chosen for multiple attacks by the great maratha king to fill his ailing coffers tells this clearly. Because it was prone to Maratha attacks, the British moved their business to Bombay.
4. Pondy could have easily replaced Madras if it were not primarily a French strong colony.
5. Thanks the precedence set by state Governments in letting Bombay be renamed as Mumbai, Madras as Chennai and Calcutta as Kolkata.
6. Using the web analogy for a place as in a page on the web.